Tunnel memory for traumatic events

Safer, Martin A.; Christianson, Sven‐Åke; Autry, Marguerite W.; Österlund, Karin

doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(199804)12:2<99::aid-acp509>3.3.co;2-z

Cited by 40 publications

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“…One exception is the study by Safer, Christianson, Autry, and Österlund (1998). These authors argued that when emotionally arousing photographs are viewed, attention automatically narrows to details that constitute the source of the emotional arousal (i.e., the attentional-narrowing hypothesis; Christianson, 1992 In two experiments, we examined Safer, Christianson, Autry, and Österlund's (1998) claim that when emotional material is remembered, tunnel memory (i.e., the tendency to remember less of a scene than was actually shown) occurs.…”

contrasting

confidence: 99%

“…With this in mind, we conducted Experiment 1. On the basis of Safer et al's (1998) findings (Experiment 4), we expected that tunnel memory (boundary restriction) would occur for drawings of aversive photographs, whereas boundary extension would occur for drawings of neutral material.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The experiments by Safer et al (1998) provide some support for such a pattern. In their experiments, participants saw a series of photographs that formed a story line.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Boundary distortions for neutral and emotional pictures

Candel

Zandbergen

2003

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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contrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Boundary distortions for neutral and emotional pictures

Candel

Zandbergen

2003

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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“…Instead, our results and those of others (Schwartz, Kowalski & McNally, 1993;Southwick, Morgan, Nicolaou & Charney, 1997) suggest that the content of traumatic intrusions can be in¯uenced by post-trauma elaboration and reconstruction (e.g. Safer, Christianson, Autry, & O È sterlund, 1998). A case in point is a study by Bryant and Harvey (1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thought suppression and traumatic intrusions in undergraduate students: a correlational study

Rassin

Muris

2001

Personality and Individual Differences

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Thought suppression (i.e. the process of consciously trying to avoid certain thoughts) is claimed to promote memory loss, but also to increase the frequency of intrusive thoughts (i.e. hyperaccessibility). Although these e ects seem contradictory, Wegner, Quillian and Houston [Wegner, D. M., Quillian, F., & Houston, C. (1996). Memories out of order: Thought suppression and the disassembly of remembered experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 680±691.] succeeded in reconciling them by postulating the``scene activation'' hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, hyperaccessibility of isolated intrusive memories, due to thought suppression, leads to perceived fragmentation (i.e. snapshot likeness) of the memory of the whole event, ultimately resulting in a perception of (partial) memory loss. To investigate this chain of events, undergraduate students (n=110) completed questionnaires about thought suppression and their memories of highly adverse experiences. Correlational analyses revealed that thought suppression was positively related to hyperaccessibility, snapshot likeness, and memory loss. Structural equation modelling elucidated that thought suppression is not necessarily the cause of these memory characteristics. #

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“…This phenomenon was therefore described as tunnel memory [29]. Rubin, Berntsen, and Bohni [30] argued that C3 (the inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma), one of the PTSD symptoms, often has the lowest factor loading because it is more likely to be an outlier from other PTSD symptoms. Moreover, the C3 symptom also contradicts the notion of tunnel memory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Memory and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Preliminary Neuropsychological Study in Female Victims of Domestic Violence

Tang¹

2014

J Psychiatry

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Objectives: The current study was designed to examine the features of emotional memory that are associated with posttraumatic stress disorder and to investigate whether emotional memory and neuropsychological function predict the severity of PTSD symptoms.Method: Forty-five domestic violence victims were recruited and separated into the PTSD and N-PTSD groups, and 31 healthy volunteers were recruited as the normal control group. All participants filled out self-report instruments and underwent neuropsychological testing as well as an unexpected memory task (emotional memory questionnaire, EMQ) after watching a film on domestic violence. The questionnaire evaluated the participants' memory of the central aspects of the film (EMQ-C) and the peripheral aspects of the film (EMQ-P). Results:The PTSD group scored lower on the EMQ-C, whereas there were no significant differences for the EMQ-P or neuropsychological measures among the three groups. Additionally, the Modified Card Sorting Test (MCST), category fluency, Verbal Paired Associates and EMQ-C predicted the PTSD symptoms. Conclusions:Both the index of the emotional memory and the perseverative error of MCST are powerful predictors of the severity levels of PTSD symptoms.

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Tunnel memory for traumatic events

Cited by 40 publications

References 0 publications

Boundary distortions for neutral and emotional pictures

Boundary distortions for neutral and emotional pictures

Thought suppression and traumatic intrusions in undergraduate students: a correlational study

Emotional Memory and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Preliminary Neuropsychological Study in Female Victims of Domestic Violence

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